{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1954", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1954, "subject": "No lie?", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-11-12T05:15:52+00:00", "last": "1999-11-15T17:58:11+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "1999-11-12T05:15:52+00:00", "subject": "(urth) No lie?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Jim Henley wrote:\n\n--------------" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Also, he met Ouen twice and on the second occasion, in CITADEL,\nfigured out\nthat Ouen was his father. If he didn't get to know Ouen any better after\nthat, it was his own fault." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "So it was his own fault. The question is whether Severian lies, not\nwhether he has character flaws." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is another case where someone seems to confuse the specific case (Sev\nlies) with the general (Sev is a Bad Guy). Evidence of the latter does not\nconstitute evidence of the former. When people point this out it is\nsuggested that they are somehow unwilling to see Sev as having flaws.<<\n--------------\n\nI'm not confused about it. You seem to have been distracted by my comment\nabout Sev not bothering to get to know his father better. I was pointing\nout another instance where Sev made a statement to the reader which was\ncontravened elsewhere in his memoir. We can argue about what \"never known my\nfather or my mother\" means, but in the context of the first pages of SHADOW,\nchapter II, where the statement occurs, Severian is talking primarily of\nsimply knowing *who his parents were*, not how well he knew them.\n\n\"Having been reared among the torturers, I have never known my father or my\nmother. No more did my brother apprentices know theirs.\" . . . \"Thus none of\nus knows our decent. Each would be an exultant if he could...\" . . . \"As\nboys each of us formed his own conjectures...\" . . . \"Eata, believing\nhimself descended of that family, drew the arms of one of the great northern\nclans...\" . . . \"For my part, I had already adopted as my own the device\ngraved in bronze...\"\n\nSev boasts often of having a perfect memory. I have pointed out several\ninstances (and there are more) where he contradicts himself. Either his\nclaim to having a perfect memory is true or it isn't. If true he has, at\ntimes, given false testimony. If not true, then his claim to having a\nperfect memory is itself a lie, and anything he says is suspect.\n\nOf the instances that I cited, more than one of them are cases where the\nstatements which are elsewhere contradicted are--literally--parenthetical\ncomments, which need not have been made at all. The fact that they occur at\nall, as well as the way in which they are made, lead me to believe that\nWolfe went out of his way to make them, that they are not mistakes on his\npart.\n\nWhat seems to be overlooked in some of the responses to the \"lies\" or memory\nlapses I pointed out is that, in the context of the fiction that Wolfe was\nmerely translating Sev's manuscript, Sev was not writing a dramatic,\non-going, real-time narrative of his adventures as they happened to him. It\nwas all written ten years after the events it describes, in the days just\nprior to his leaving for Yesod. There was never an occasion where subsequent\nevents would cause him to amend unconditional statements made in his\nmanuscript. Thus, when he writes \"last time\" it means \"last time\", not \"last\ntime except for that other time\". When he writes \"never went again\" that\nmeans \"never went again\" not \"never went again except for all those other\ntimes I went\". He's lying needlessly or he can't remember correctly, either\nthe events or what he just wrote of them.\n\nIn his conversation with the mandragora he said: \"No one has ever accused me\nof being an honest man, and I've told lies enough when I thought they would\nserve my turn, ...\" In the very next chapter he interrupts his account of\nevents ten years ago to relate the visit of Dr. Talos in the present, while\nhe is writing his manuscript, just days before leaving for Yesod:\n\n \"You have bettered yourself,\" he said . . . \"You may recall that I\ninvariably affirmed you would. Honesty, integrity, and intelligence cannot\nbe kept down.\"\n \"We both know that nothing is easier to keep down,\" I said. \"By my old\nguild, they were kept down every day.\"\n\nAs the text makes clear several times, the torturers' guild was almost\nunknown to people outside the Citadel. It had very little impact on the\nlives of people in Nessus or the Commonwealth. Yet Sev was reared in that\nguild. If his comment means anything, he was talking about himself. He was\nthe product of his environment and was short on all three qualities.\n\n--------------" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Jim Henley also wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Is there anything to demonstrate that Sev knows the complete\ntruth about\nthe mausoleum before the events of URTH? This is a genuine rather than\nrhetorical question.<<" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Chapter XXXVIII of CITADEL: \"I know too in whose mausoleum I tarried as a\nchild, that little building of stone with its rose, its fountain, and its\nflying ship all graven. I have disturbed my own tomb, and now I\ngo to lie in it.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Thank you. It's established. It doesn't make Sev a liar though,<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "*I* didn't say it did. I just answered your question, without comment." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "just shows that for a novice writer he has an instinctive sense of pacing." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I mean, that would be a good book, wouldn't it? Chapter Two: \"So there was\nthis tomb I used to play in as a boy. It was my tomb, and I was some kind of\ntime traveller. Not that I knew that right at that moment. See, time isn't\nlike a river, it's like an ocean with ripples. That's what these space guys\ntold me years later. Their names were . . . \"<<\n\nOr better yet, what he actually *did* write, the last line of chapter I: \"It\nwas in this fashion that I began the long journey by which I backed into the\nthrone.\"\n\nRoy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-11-15T17:58:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) re: No lie?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nOf the instances that I cited, more than one of them are cases where the\nstatements which are elsewhere contradicted are--literally--parenthetical\ncomments, which need not have been made at all. The fact that they occur at\nall, as well as the way in which they are made, lead me to believe that\nWolfe went out of his way to make them, that they are not mistakes on his\npart." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, that can be argued either way. You can just as easily\nsay (and I do) that the parenthetical nature of the\ncontradictions shows that GW wasn't thinking too hard when\nhe wrote them. He's on the umpteenth rewrite, he adds a few\nlittle insights, rewords a couple of weak-looking\nparagraphs, and because he's Severian's creator, not\nSeverian, he makes a few mistakes. It's all too easy, as\nanyone will know who's ever had cause to regret inserting\nwhat seemed at the time a brilliant last-minute argument\ninto an essay five minutes before deadline.\n\nNobody, not even GW, is perfect. Once you start milling down\nany work of literature as finely as we do, you're going to\nfind ugly, illusion-shattering errors. Lady Macbeth: did she\nhave children or didn't she? Robinson Crusoe: swims naked to\nthe wreck, fills his pockets with useful stuff. Dr John\nWatson or Dr James Watson?\n\nI would be more convinced by the Severian forgets\\lies to us\ntheory if the contradictions were -less- parenthetical." } ] } ] }